From my memoirs:

I primarily remember my 4th grade teacher Mrs. Adams for introducing me to Paul Klee's "Senecio" (which I believe she simply called "Head of a Man") in 1965. She had a bunch of Great Art mounted on big cards and flipped through them one by one, asking what we students thought of them. The Flemish Great Masters stuff generally left me cold. When she got to Klee's work there was silence in the room. Attempting to provoke involvement she asked, "Comment? (Absolute quiet.) Anyone?" I chimed in with something like, "I like this picture because the eyebrow looks like the man has a question on his mind, but the tiny, closed mouth makes it look like he's afraid to ask it. I feel like that in class sometimes. The colors make me think of modern furniture."

I recall a thunderstruck expression on Mrs. Adams' face.

I have seen this work many times since then - most recently in the McDonald's across the street from where I used to work! Decorated by a franchise-owner of apparently upwardly-mobile corporate aspirations (the booths have Internet ports so busy executives can plug their laptops in for a working lunch - as if they dine in a McDonald's), this place has works by Manet, Klee, Picasso, Klimt and Matisse on the walls. Every now and then I'll have a cheeseburger there, and Klee's man will stare at me and wonder how I'm enjoying it but refuse to ask.

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From a museum booklet:

PAUL KLEE 1879-1940 Senecio (Baldgreis),1922 Oil on chalk primer on gauze on card, set in original yellow frame

40.3 x 37.4 cm 1569 Kunstmuseum Basel, purchase, 1931

THE SUBJECT OF THIS portrait looks at the viewer with slightly raised eyebrows. The flat, disc-like face is reduced to the bare essentials needed to make it recognizable as such: eyes, nose, mouth and a basic circular shape uniting the individual elements. The simplicity of the composition is reminiscent of a child's drawing. Senecio is one of Klee's best-known works and was painted during his time as a teacher at the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau (1921-1930). It is therefore not surprising that it shows similarities to Oskar Schlemmer's Bauhaus emblem. No less important, however, are the influences of West African doll culture, and of Pablo Picasso's Portrait of Wilhelm Uhde and Marc Chagall's The Soldier drinks.

The title Senecio relates to Senecio vulgaris, the botanical name for groundsel. In the catalogue of his works, Paul Klee gave the picture the title Baldgreis (translates as 'Ageing Man'), which could be understood as a humorous reference to the sitter's age. The face is structured in the simple geometric shapes propounded by the Bauhaus, although Klee chose light, warm colours instead of the primary colours that they preferred.

In the first half of the twentieth century, the rejection of realism and the development of abstract art had become a major theme for many European artists and Paul Klee also took up this challenge. Born in Bern in 1879, he was intensively occupied throughout his life with expressionism, cubism and surrealism, but very early on in his apprenticeship developed an independent direction of his own. This painting is an impressive example of the great perspicacity and wit that characterizes Klee's analysis of the world around him. It demonstrates how, despite the abstraction created by the use of simple geometric shapes, Klee nevertheless constantly returned to realism, though in a playful and ironic manner.